The Button, War as a Means of Prosperity:
From the Perspective of "the Twilight Zone"
by Lonna Gooden VanHorn
It is strange what a person recalls from childhood. I am old enough that I remember the days before television. When we did get our first tv set I was 11 or so. Every program was a new experience. Some of them made a lasting impression.
I remember an episode of "The Twilight Zone." A couple was in dire financial straits, and it was causing the stress in their lives and marriage that severe money problems often cause.
A man appeared at their door one day with a black box featuring a large button. He told the couple that if they pushed the button they would receive a million dollars, but that someone they didn't know somewhere in the world would die. He left the box with them.
Well, they were appalled. They would not be responsible for someone's death just for money! They could never do such a thing! But, as the days went by after the man left and their financial situation became increasingly desperate, the idea of a million dollars looked ever more attractive. They began to rationalize the act of murder that would serve as their salvation. They were afraid of the box even as they tried to convince themselves that no one could possibly die because they pushed a button on a box.
After a few days the woman (in the haze of my long ago memory it had to be the woman just as it was Eve in the Biblical story who took the first bite of the apple), pushed the button.
If the overlap of spending attributed to NASA and the Energy Department were counted as the defense spending it actually is, the United States is now spending nearly half of its' revenue on the military - one writer calculated the actual expense at over $700 billion dollars annually. The Defense Department cannot (or will not) account for nearly a quarter of the money it spends, but because members of Congress, too, are both fearful and manipulated (and lobbied by the military-industrial complex), with barely a protest and without demanding a full accounting, most vote to continue to allocate whatever amount of money the Defense Department requests. General Douglas McArthur commented on this fact years ago:
"The powers in charge keep us in a perpetual state of fear: keep us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded, yet in retrospect these disasters seem to never have happened, seem never to have been quite real."
Our military spending is now or soon will be, more than that of all other nations combined. Logically, who should be afraid of whom? But, keeping the people afraid guarantees government contracts and fat profits for the weapons builders. And, keeping the people afraid is what members of the Bush administration do best.
To quote Dr. Charles Mercieca, President of the International Association of Educators for World Peace and Professor Emeritus at Alabama A&M University,
"The weapons industry has emerged to become the worst source of terrorism" of recorded history"What is amazing is that it succeeded to hypnotize intelligent people from every walk of life" into believing its product contributes to the protection and security of our respective nations."
General McArthur had something to say about this as well:
"I have known war as few men now living know it. It's very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes."
He also said that war is caused by undefended wealth. In the case of Iraq, that undefended wealth is oil.
Dr. Mercieca asks us to ponder what would make us feel safer: if we were in a crowded theater in which everyone had a gun, or if we were in a crowded theater where no one had a gun. He also interjects into his argument other facts we prefer not to think about:
"Tens of millions every year incur cancer because of toxic wastes it [the weapons industry] produces which poison our air, our water, and our land" As though this would not be enough, several groups at the grassroots level work constantly like devils to create regional conflicts as to justify the continued manufacture and sales of weapons of destruction."
The United States manufactures and sells more weapons than any other country on earth. We provide aid packages to other nations that include a large contingency of weapons. We sell them to friend (legal) and enemy (illegal). We circumvent the illegal by selling weapons to our enemies through foreign subsidiaries of American companies, or our corporations find other ways to circumvent the law. Ask members of the first and second Bush administrations (including Dick Cheney) for the fine points of how that is done -- they are experts in the field.
We provided weapons to both sides during the Iran/Iraq War. We lend countries money to buy weapons so our banks can profit from the killing as well. The economy booms. As do our stock portfolios if we were prudent enough to invest in companies involved in the weapons industry. As Dr. Mercieca says, "weapons are not made for defense, they are made for profit."
General Smedley Butler in his "War is a Racket" speech said wars are fought by the "very many for the benefit of the very few." They are fought, he said, for corporate profits. War is an arm of business.
President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, warned about the influence of the military-industrial complex on policy decisions. He was afraid Congress would come to make decisions, such as the decision to go to war, based on the financial interests and health of the weapons makers. I doubt, however, that Ike, who knew the horrors of war and who was a man of honor, ever imagined the American people would come to be governed by a president and vice-president with so little integrity and honor that they would push for war largely out of their desire to enrich the bank accounts of their friends and members of their families, and to swell the coffers of their corporate campaign contributors.
Interestingly enough, the Carlyle Group, for which Bush, Sr. was a "consultant" for many years went from being 43rd among military contractors to 11th during Junior's first term as president. Bush, Sr. finally resigned from the Carlyle Group in the late fall of 2003.
One soldier wrote home from Iraq that he thought we went to war because Halliburton, Dick Cheney's former firm, needed money to offset the asbestos lawsuits filed against it. Coincidentally, Halliburton's revenue has skyrocketed in the past four years despite allegations of bribery and fraud, and despite the fact that Halliburton is under investigation for price gouging.
Eisenhower also said there is no way to ensure absolute security, but, he said, we could bankrupt ourselves both morally and financially in the vain search to try to find it. However, because the powers that be deliberately manipulate the public by manufacturing enemies and ratcheting up our fear, we, the people, stand mutely by and let the government and the weapons manufacturers get away with their largely counter-productive, but highly profitable institutionalized death-dealing. Both General Butler and President Eisenhower said we waste our resources and the genius of our scientists to research death rather than to enhance life. Eisenhower said, "Total unilateral disarmament is the imperative of our time." But now we are about to begin developing new nuclear weapons
The failed rescue attempt of the American hostages in Iran was the excuse for Reagan's orgy of military spending in the 80's. Our military equipment, we were told, was outdated and didn't function well. After trillions of dollars have been spent, much of our basic equipment, helicopters, for example, still does not function well in the desert. And the research for ever deadlier weapons continues.
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, the idea was that we would be able to divert some of the money formerly allocated to the military industrial complex to domestic needs, but the military-industrial complex was not about to forego profit because of peace and the fact that we no longer had a serious "enemy." Other enemies were discovered.
Small skirmishes are not as lucrative as large ones, and oil is a valuable commodity to control, so, in the fall of 2002, timed to distract the public from such issues as corporate scandals and the failing economy, Iraq became the convenient chosen enemy for a major offensive effort aimed at world domination and control, and the interests of the military industrial complex.
The invasion of Iraq is over, but the occupation and the dying is not. In Iraq and elsewhere unknown people are still dying every day for the sake of our military-industrial complex, but we would rather not think about it, and because we are kept in ignorance of the details by the corporate owned press, and the military's "embedded" reporters we don't have to think about it.
Americans lust after violence in their entertainment as, perhaps, do no other people, and no type of manufactured violence is too gruesome to be given a showing, but we cannot be allowed to see graphic gore or suffering that is real. Unconscionably, the Iraq War was portrayed for the American public as a largely painless, victimless, awesome Nintendo game laser light show. "Shock and Awe." And the American press is, now, largely kept away from danger zones.
They don't show us many gruesome pictures and make us face what war is actually like. The military censors Al Jazeera and other foreign news organizations that do show the true face of war. They don't want to offend our "sensibilities"
The real reason we are not shown the gore of war, of course, is that if we were made to face the truth about what our government is doing we would be less willing to accept their word every time government operatives tell us there is a "need" to go to war.
The founding fathers were very aware of how military power had been misused by European kings for personal and political gain for themselves and their supporters. They were determined such misuse of power would not happen in America -- think Halliburton, Bechtel, Chevron, United Defense, etc. -- which is why many were vehemently against maintaining a standing army. They knew that if a standing army were established reasons would be found to use it. To that end they decreed that Congress and not the president alone should have the power to declare war.
Because it is more comfortable not to face the truth we rationalize: We need a "strong" defense don't we? The military-industrial complex provides jobs for people doesn't it? Besides, how do we know someone is dying somewhere in the world largely for the sake of our weapons manufacturers? People kill each other all over the world all the time and always have. How is it necessarily our fault? Why should we feel guilty? If we didn't sell them weapons someone else would. The world is overpopulated anyway. War is a way of cutting back on the excess population.
As long as the deaths don't affect us personally, we don't think that much about them. Former first lady Barbara Bush is a perfect example of that kind of indifference. At the onset of the war she said on a morning television show that she would watch "none" of television's war coverage because "90 percent" of it would be speculative. "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's going to happen?"It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
The longer the deaths continue in Iraq, the less will be made of them -- both Iraqi deaths, and the deaths of our own soldiers. The war is no longer "new," "exciting" or "good news." Hearing about it might make us feel guilty for our part in the mistake this war has turned out to be. We don't want to think about the soldiers and the Iraqi people who are suffering for that mistake. It might make us uncomfortable. Tell us about Kobe Bryant instead. Or Michael Jackson.
And now because of all the weapons that have been used and must be replaced, and because the destruction we have wrought upon another nation must be repaired, all at taxpayer expense, the military-industrial complex is in clover, with no end of violence and thus the need for weapons, destruction, and, thus, rebuilding contracts at taxpayer expense in sight. General Smedley Butler had something to say about that as well:
"The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits -- ah! that is another matter -- twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent -- the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it."
Again, think Halliburton and Bechtel.
The stock market is going up for those who invested in the "right" stocks. Happy days are here again. Except for the dead and maimed soldiers and their families. Except for the dead and maimed Iraqi people and their families.
It is time the American people face the fact that as long as we allow the economy of our nation to be based to such a large degree on the sale and use of weapons of death, EACH ONE OF US, IN A SMALL WAY, IS, like the woman in the twilight zone episode I recounted at the beginning of this essay, GUILTY OF PUSHING THE BLACK BUTTON OF DEATH!!
Bio: Lonna Gooden VanHorn is a mother of 6 and a grandmother who began writing out of her frustration over the main-stream media's failure to do its job during the run up to the Iraq War. Their willingness to accept without question the word of the Bush administration about the need to go to war with Iraq -- to ask the question, for instance, about WHO stood to profit from war (members of the first and second Bush administrations), and to not interview international experts, military leaders and the rest of the world community who believed war was unnecessary and would, in fact, lead to disaster is, in her opinion, one of the main reasons we are in the mess we are in now.
Raised on a small farm in Minnesota, Lonna now lives in New Mexico with her husband, a veteran who spent 18 months in Vietnam. Her other writings can be found in OPEDNEWS archives of regular contributors, and on other sites on the internet.
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